Educated change to cabinet name

It used to be executives who had to worry about whether they had the most appropriate job title.

But enough of a push from the higher education sector made Julia Gillard change a ministerial appellation.

The universities wanted Chris Evans’s title to start with “tertiary education" when he and the rest of the ministry were sworn in yesterday – and that’s what they got.

The chief executive of Universities Australia, Glenn Withers, told reporters it was a good result.

“We are pleased to have a titling distraction out of the way, but it was a titling issue that was very important to people within universities," says Withers. What seemed to bug the academics the most was the idea the sector would only be useful in supplying job applicants.

The Coalition tried to describe it as a big embarrassment for the new government but didn’t get too far.

Far more interesting from the Coalition’s point of view was the return of Malcolm Turnbull as communications spokesman – seemingly with the task of derailing the NBN.

In describing the changes to his team generally, Tony Abbott claims “there is something of the quality of snakes and ladders about the business of politics’’.